Saturday, July 22, 2017

Alternative to scp

For transferring files from remote computer, I use scp command. In this post. I will cover an alternative command: rsync.

The syntax is very similar to scp. For example,$ rsync some/local/file user@remote:/location/in/remote$ rsync user@remote:/location/in/remote some/local/file

However, the options are quite different. I would say just use -aP$ rsync -aP some/local/file user@remote:/location/in/remote$ rsync -aP user@remote:/location/in/remote some/local/file

Here, -a stands for archive, which includes recursive -r option, and -P stands for --partial and --progress. With these options, you can resume downloading the files when interrupted.

For more info, look up man page:$ man rsync

Ah, by the way, if you are using port other than 22, make sure to use -e option as below:$ rsync -aP -e 'ssh -P 1234' some/local/file user@remote:/location/in/remote$ rsync -aP -e 'ssh -P 1234' user@remote:/location/in/remote some/local/file
where 1234 is the port you want to use.